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“Count the number of dreams you have and compare them with the number of achievements you’ve had. If you have more dreams than achievements, then you are still young.”
What I was, in fact, was what I have remained: at ninety-three, I am still that curious boy, enamored of hard questions, eager to dream, and unbowed by the doubt of others.
a shepherd, for example, may have authority over his flock, but that alone does not mean he can control it.
Ben-Gurion had shown me that listening is not just a key element of good leadership, it is the key, the means to unlock doors that have been slammed shut by bitter dispute and resignation.
that the doubts of those without imagination were no reason to abandon an important idea.
Success built my confidence. Failure steeled my spine.
Experience has taught me three things about cynicism: First, it’s a powerful force with the ability to trample the aspirations of an entire people. Second, it is universal, fundamentally part of human nature, a disease that is ubiquitous and global. Third, it is the single greatest threat to the next generation of leadership. In a world of so many grave challenges, what could be more dangerous than discouraging ideas and ambition?
Besides, optimism is a prerequisite of progress. It provides the inspiration we need, especially in hard times. And it provides the encouragement that wills us to chase our grandest ambitions out into the world, instead of locking them away in the safe quiet of our minds.
Innovation, I have come to understand, is always an uphill climb.
I decided to heed the words of my late mentor, Ben-Gurion, who had passed away in 1973. “If an expert says it can’t be done, get another expert.”
“We have to use our imagination, and examine any idea, as crazy as it may seem,”
Far too often, especially under stress (and few things could have been more stressful than the Entebbe crisis), we turn inward and close down. Believing that distraction is the greatest danger, our analysis simplifies in hope of increasing not the odds of success, necessarily, but the chance we will be certain about what the outcome will be. This can be a great strategy for defense, but until one accepts that “unlikely” does not mean “impossible,” the chances of developing creative solutions are severely limited.
It is only after we see failure that we can know if we misjudged the risk.
But one must also avoid the temptation to overlearn specific tactical lessons born out of failure or success.
This is one of the hardest things for some leaders to understand: a decision can be right even if it leads to failure.
History hinges on successes and failures. But reaching for the former to avoid the latter does not depend on our capacity to hope. It depends on our capacity to think clearly, to choose wisely, and ultimately, to make the moral choice—even in the face of danger.
If leaders demand allegiance without encouraging creativity and outside inspiration, the odds of failure vastly increase. This is one of the great lessons of Entebbe, but it is enveloped in an even larger one: without emboldening people to envisage the unlikely, we increase risk rather than diminish it.
even the brave and the bold can fall victim to pessimism.
I had never been one to believe that the best course of action was to retreat from risk.
called Yozma (which means “initiative”), the other called Inbal (which means “tongue of the bell”). They were distinct in design but similar in their general ambition: the government would take ownership of most of the risk of an investment but cede all of the reward to investors. These programs ignited entrepreneurship in Israel in the early 1990s, creating the first wave of substantial venture capital.
Innovation, I understood, was not a mission to be completed, but a never-ending pursuit. We had created a system where investors were coming to us expecting pioneering technology. To keep them coming, we had to stay on the furthest frontier of science. As I’ve often said, it’s not enough to be up to date. We have to be up “to-morrow.”
Peace is, after all, our heart’s truest desire,
tikkun olam, the ambition to improve the whole world, not just ourselves.
tikkun olam,
